A virtual PDF printer allows you to create PDF files from any other format. It is possible to convert a file into PDF simply by opening it with the relative program (wordprocessor, spreadsheet, text editor ..) and printing it as you would normally print it, except that instead of selecting a hardware printer you select the virtual PDF printer. This effectively creates a PDF version of the file that we printed via the virtual PDF printer. With this procedure, you can convert virtually any type of file to PDF format.
I split my PDF but the resulting files are so big!
You used the split feature to split your PDF file (10 pages 1MB) and the result is 10 PDF files almost 1MB each… something must be wrong, it should have been 10 PDF files roughly 100kB each right? Wrong.
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Viewer options and slideshow
I started to work at the new enhanced features for PDFsam called vieweroptions and slideshow. Pdf format comes with the capability to let you set viewer options (you can set options on the pdf document on how the viewer should open the document like fullscreen, document outline, two pages …) and with a set of transition effects (dissolve, glide …) and options (effect duration, show page duration) to let you create a slide show with your pdf document.
Using fullscreen and the transitions you can have a pdf document working more or less like a MS Power Point presentation. I’ve never used MS Power Point but there are a lot of effects (much more than the 16 available with the pdf format) anyway, even with this limited set of effects, this feature could help you to have portable and good looking presentation. Both features will be added as a console command for the PDFsam basic and enhanced versions, and as GUI plugins for the enhanced version and they will be released after the new stable release, probably late in summer.